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How to Rid Your Website of Six Common Google Analytics Headaches

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 May 2015 04:18:00 -0700

I’ve been in and out of Google Analytics (GA) for the past five or so years agency-side. I’ve seen three different code libraries, dozens of new different features and reports roll out, IP addresses stop being reported, and keywords not-so-subtly phased out of the free platform.

Analytics has been a focus of mine for the past year or so—mainly, making sure clients get their data right. Right now, our new focus is closed loop tracking, but that’s a topic for another day. If you’re using Google Analytics, and only Google Analytics for the majority of your website stats, or it’s your primary vehicle for analysis, you need to make sure it’s accurate.

Not having data pulling in or reporting properly is like building a house on a shaky foundation: It doesn’t end well. Usually there are tears.

For some reason, a lot of people, including many of my clients, assume everything is tracking properly in Google Analytics... because Google. But it’s not Google who sets up your analytics. People do that. And people are prone to make mistakes.

I’m going to go through six scenarios where issues are commonly encountered with Google Analytics.

I'll outline the remedy for each issue, and in the process, show you how to move forward with a diagnosis or resolution.

1. Self-referrals

This is probably one of the areas we’re all familiar with. If you’re seeing a lot of traffic from your own domain, there’s likely a problem somewhere—or you need to extend the default session length in Google Analytics. (For example, if you have a lot of long videos or music clips and don’t use event tracking; a website like TEDx or SoundCloud would be a good equivalent.)

Typically one of the first things I’ll do to help diagnose the problem is include an advanced filter to show the full referrer string. You do this by creating a filter, as shown below:

Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced

Field A: Hostname

Extract A: (.*)

Field B: Request URI

Extract B: (.*)

Output To: Request URI

Constructor: $A1$B1

You’ll then start seeing the subdomains pulling in. Experience has shown me that if you have a separate subdomain hosted in another location (say, if you work with a separate company and they host and run your mobile site or your shopping cart), it gets treated by Google Analytics as a separate domain. Thus, you 'll need to implement cross domain tracking. This way, you can narrow down whether or not it’s one particular subdomain that's creating the self-referrals.

In this example below, we can see all the revenue is being reported to the booking engine (which ended up being cross domain issues) and their own site is the fourth largest traffic source:

I’ll also a good idea to check the browser and device reports to start narrowing down whether the issue is specific to a particular element. If it’s not, keep digging. Look at pages pulling the self-referrals and go through the code with a fine-tooth comb, drilling down as much as you can.

2. Unusually low bounce rate

If you have a crazy-low bounce rate, it could be too good to be true. Unfortunately. An unusually low bounce rate could (and probably does) mean that at least on some pages of your website have the same Google Analytics tracking code installed twice.

Take a look at your source code, or use Google Tag Assistant (though it does have known bugs) to see if you’ve got GA tracking code installed twice.

While I tell clients having Google Analytics installed on the same page can lead to double the pageviews, I’ve not actually encountered that—I usually just say it to scare them into removing the duplicate implementation more quickly. Don’t tell on me.

3. Iframes anywhere

I’ve heard directly from Google engineers and Google Analytics evangelists that Google Analytics does not play well with iframes, and that it will never will play nice with this dinosaur technology.

If you track the iframe, you inflate your pageviews, plus you still aren’t tracking everything with 100% clarity.

If you don’t track across iframes, you lose the source/medium attribution and everything becomes a self-referral.

Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

My advice: Stop using iframes. They’re Netscape-era technology anyway, with rainbow marquees and Comic Sans on top. Interestingly, and unfortunately, a number of booking engines (for hotels) and third-party carts (for ecommerce) still use iframes.

If you have any clients in those verticals, or if you’re in the vertical yourself, check with your provider to see if they use iframes. Or you can check for yourself, by right-clicking as close as you can to the actual booking element:

There is no neat and tidy way to address iframes with Google Analytics, and usually iframes are not the only complicated element of setup you’ll encounter. I spent eight months dealing with a website on a subfolder, which used iframes and had a cross domain booking system, and the best visibility I was able to get was about 80% on a good day.

Typically, I’d approach diagnosing iframes (if, for some reason, I had absolutely no access to viewing a website or talking to the techs) similarly to diagnosing self-referrals, as self-referrals are one of the biggest symptoms of iframe use.

4. Massive traffic jumps

Massive jumps in traffic don’t typically just happen. (Unless, maybe, you’re Geraldine.) There’s always an explanation—a new campaign launched, you just turned on paid ads for the first time, you’re using content amplification platforms, you’re getting a ton of referrals from that recent press in The New York Times. And if you think it just happened, it’s probably a technical glitch.

I’ve seen everything from inflated pageviews result from including tracking on iframes and unnecessary implementation of virtual pageviews, to not realizing the tracking code was installed on other microsites for the same property. Oops.

Usually I’ve seen this happen when the tracking code was somewhere it shouldn’t be, so if you’re investigating a situation of this nature, first confirm the Google Analytics code is only in the places it needs to be.Tools like Google Tag Assistant and Screaming Frog can be your BFFs in helping you figure this out.

Also, I suggest bribing the IT department with sugar (or booze) to see if they’ve changed anything lately.

5. Cross domain tracking

I wish cross domain tracking with Google Analytics out of the box didn’t require any additional setup. But it does.

If you don’t have it set up properly, things break down quickly, and can be quite difficult to untangle.

The older the GA library you’re using, the harder it is. The easiest setup, by far, is Google Tag Manager with Universal Analytics. Hard-coded universal analytics is a bit more difficult because you have to implement autoLink manually and decorate forms, if you’re using them (and you probably are). Beyond that, rather than try and deal with it, I say update your Google Analytics code. Then we can talk.

Where I’ve seen the most murkiness with tracking is when parts of cross domain tracking are implemented, but not all. For some reason, if allowLinker isn’t included, or you forget to decorate all the forms, the cookies aren’t passed between domains.

The absolute first place I would start with this would be confirming the cookies are all passing properly at all the right points, forms, links, and smoke signals. I’ll usually use a combination of the Real Time report in Google Analytics, Google Tag Assistant, and GA debug to start testing this. Any debug tool you use will mean you’re playing in the console, so get friendly with it.

6. Internal use of UTM strings

I’ve saved the best for last. Internal use of campaign tagging. We may think, oh, I use Google to tag my campaigns externally, and we’ve got this new promotion on site which we’re using a banner ad for. That’s a campaign. Why don’t I tag it with a UTM string?

Step away from the keyboard now. Please.

When you tag internal links with UTM strings, you override the original source/medium. So that visitor who came in through your paid ad and then who clicks on the campaign banner has now been manually tagged. You lose the ability to track that they came through on the ad the moment they click on the tagged internal link. Their source and medium is now your internal campaign, not that paid ad you’re spending gobs of money on and have to justify to your manager. See the problem?

I’ve seen at least three pretty spectacular instances of this in the past year, and a number of smaller instances of it. Annie Cushing also talks about the evils of internal UTM tags and the odd prevalence of it. (Oh, and if you haven’t explored her blog, and the amazing spreadsheets she shares, please do.)

One clothing company I worked with tagged all of their homepage offers with UTM strings, which resulted in the loss of visibility for one-third of their audience: One million visits over the course of a year, and $2.1 million in lost revenue.

Let me say that again. One million visits, and $2.1 million. That couldn’t be attributed to an external source/campaign/spend.

Another client I audited included campaign tagging on nearly every navigational element on their website. It still gives me nightmares.

If you want to see if you have any internal UTM strings, head straight to the Campaigns report in Acquisition in Google Analytics, and look for anything like "home" or "navigation" or any language you may use internally to refer to your website structure.

And if you want to see how users are moving through your website, go to the Flow reports. Or if you really, really, really want to know how many people click on that sidebar link, use event tracking. But please, for the love of all things holy (and to keep us analytics lovers from throwing our computers across the room), stop using UTM tagging on your internal links.

Now breathe and smile

Odds are, your Google Analytics setup is fine. If you are seeing any of these issues, though, you have somewhere to start in diagnosing and addressing the data.

We’ve looked at six of the most common points of friction I've encountered with Google Analytics and how to start investigating them: self-referrals, bounce rate, iframes, traffic jumps, cross domain tracking and internal campaign tagging.

What common data integrity issues have you encountered with Google Analytics? What are your favorite tools to investigate?

Source: https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-rid-your-website-of-six-common-google-analytics-headaches

You Finally Achieved Content Virality! Now What?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 May 2015 04:15:00 -0700

If you've ever achieved the holy grail of content marketing success—true virality—you know the rush of endorphins as you watch the share count climb. You've smiled the enormous grin when one of your friends shares that piece on Facebook without any idea that you helped create it. Maybe you've even felt the skin-chilling prickle when Buzzfeed picks up your content.

Then you've undoubtedly experienced the heart-stopping numbness when the traffic finally stalls. Where did all the people go? Was it real? Can you do it again?

What happens next depends on which camp you fall into. Most people either

Squander that success in a haze of denial, or
Rush back to their desks to copy the thing that just went viral so they can replicate the success (only to find that the Internet is already over it).

But there is a third, better way—you can learn everything possible from this moment of greatness and turn it around to create something even more shareable next time. This third path is not easy, but it is the surest way to get you back on the road to virality. Here's how.

Celebrate your success

Duh. You were going to do this anyway, but take a moment (or a day) to fully enjoy all the tweets, traffic, and accolades. This will give you energy for the next step and you'll be all the more focused for the long road ahead.

Analyze what went right

Sometimes content marketing feels like throwing Velcro darts at the wall—you just don't know what's going to stick. But when something finally does stick, there are a lot of lessons to be learned about your audience and what might work in the future.

For example, take this post from Organic Gardening, "7 Secrets for a High-Yield Vegetable Garden." According to BuzzSumo, it has six times as many shares as the next most successful article from the same site.

In fact, when looking at content that contained the word "garden," the post had more than twice as many shares as the top post from Country Living, a magazine with about five times the circulation.

I think we can safely call this piece a runaway success. Now let's look at what made this article so much more viral than its top three friends.

Title

It's not too much of a stretch to say that "7 Secrets for a High-Yield Vegetable Garden" is a lot sexier title than "Gardener's April To-Do List," "Going with the Flow," and "Cauliflower with Peas."

Not only does the highly successful article contain one of those emotion words that get us all excited to click, the title actually fully describes what the article is about—passing what Ian Lurie calls the"blank sheet of paper" test. You'll note that the titles listed in BuzzSumo are actually more descriptive than those on the page—next time they might want to use the more descriptive titles on the page.

Format

The format of these four articles is pretty basic: text with at least one related image. In fact, the to-do list article could have gone a bit farther if someone had turned it into a downloadable checklist (or at least a checklist).

Sometimes, like when you've invested heavily in a flashy parallax scrolling piece, it's easy to surmise that form contributed heavily to the success of the content. But in this case, it's unlikely that the form of this article gave it a viral advantage.

Length

These four articles vary widely in length, but they conform to what you might expect from the types of articles that they are. "Go with the Flow" is more of an essay and should be longer, whereas to-do lists and recipes get less useful the longer they are.

7 Secrets	April To-Do	Going w/Flow	Cauliflower
1100+ words	800+ words	1700+ words	200+ words

I'd argue that "7 Secrets" is an exception here, in that it's more in-depth than it needs to be—in a good way. This could be one contributor to its success.

Topic

Not only is the "7 Secrets" title much more clickable, the viral article also hits on high-yield gardening—a high-interest topic. Having not seen the personas for this site, I'm not sure if Organic Gardening has identified gardeners with limited space or gardeners who are trying to sustain themselves entirely from their yards as targets, but this article would be interesting to both groups (which means more excited readers to share the content).

The to-do list article is practical and "Going with the Flow" (about water conservation) is newsworthy (although it would do a lot better if it mentioned the California drought in the intro). If you love cauliflower, perhaps you can tell me why that recipe is popular. But it's easy to see why none of these other three articles broke through the viral barrier.

Timeliness

From what I can tell, the original article is actually a couple of years old. It's just been hanging out waiting for the right moment. So goes content marketing. But the week that it went nuts on BuzzSumo was in late March—the very week I was mapping my own garden.

That said, it isn't the most timely of these four articles. The April to-do list is very timely (and this kind of evergreen content has the chance to get picked up again year after year) and, as mentioned, the article about water (despite being written in 2011) is on-trend with current events in California.

Again, you'll have to tell me if cauliflower is timeless, because I'm still not understanding the success of that recipe.

One caveat: There's some weirdness around the dating on this site (especially since the site re-branded in the middle of me writing this draft). If you dig into the publication date, it's April 1, 2015, a few days after March 29, 2015 (the date BuzzSumo called its publication date). And when I first started writing this article I think I found that the page was created about two years ago (though I can no longer verify that information).

Your lesson here is that if you do a site rebrand in the middle of assessing your content, your data will likely contain weirdness too.

Overall quality

This is where your spidey sense comes in, because overall quality is in many ways a combination of all the factors we just looked at along with the strength of the writing. But there's also that je ne sais quoi factor where you have to trust your gut (don't worry, spotting great content is easier than you think).

"7 Secrets" really is a better article for the Internet than the other three. It's easy to share, seems high-impact, and is a fast read. "Going with the Flow" is also a good article, especially with the storytelling angle, but the anecdotal lead-in followed by the intercontinental comparison of water management styles smacks of classic print journalism (requiring thoughtful rumination), which means it might be more appropriate or successful offline.

Influencer name dropping

Ego bait is a tried and true content marketing tactic. It's not used in this article, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good tool to keep on hand. If I wanted this article to go even more viral, I would have put names to the two experts they cite (and then reached out to tell those experts that I was quoting them).

The social angle

Looking at "7 Secrets" against the April to-do list, we can immediately spot a few reasons it was roughly three times more popular on the social network. It has an active and enticing image, the accompanying text is both inspirational and asks for engagement, and the article description is, well, descriptive.

Now, I don't have access to the internal Facebook analytics of this site, but if I did, I'd be looking hard at trends in what times of day and days of week they find the most engagement as well as whether there was any paid promotion to see what else can be learned.

High-profile sharers

As you can see, except for the magazine itself, very few people who shared this article on Twitter even have more than 1,000 followers. That might not be bad for you and me, but it's not going to cause a viral stampede.

If you find that more recognizable folks (or even those with a lot more followers) were part of your success, it might be time to build some relationships there. You can do that either by involving them in your content creation process in the future or by reaching out when you have something new to promote.

You don't have to wait until something goes viral to analyze what content is succeeding and why. Get some practice now (and help yourself on the road to virality):

Download this checklist as a template

Now that you understand what contributes to content virality, you're ready to try to capture that magic all over again.

Resist the urge to imitate

This sounds counter-intuitive, but the last thing you want to do after achieving content success is to run out and do exactly what you did last time. Why? Because the Internet craves novelty, and just like it's completely adorable when your friend's toddler sticks his tongue out at you for the first time, the second, third, and thirty-seventh times are increasingly less adorable (and notable).

Instead, use all that analysis you just did of what made the piece successful to remix those elements and try something new. In the case of the garden efficiency article we've been looking at, I'd follow up with a profile of three influential organic gardeners who have different ways of achieving efficiency in their gardens.

Enough about gardening already, what about some other topics like windows, water, and dessert.

If "DIY Craft Projects using Old Vintage Windows Doors" earned you 428k shares, avoid writing "DIY Craft Projects Using Old Vintage Bannisters" and instead think more broadly with something like "10 Best Stores in the US to Find Vintage Windows for Your Project" or "Last Minute Summer Patio Projects for Upscale Freecyclers." The first plays with influencer marketing and the second explores a niche readership that has the potential to be very passionate about sharing your content.
If you've recently had success with "Gray Whale Dies Bringing Us a Message - With Stomach Full of Plastic Trash" (226k+ shares), skip starting a series on dead animals that are portending the end of the earth. Instead try something like an infographic that shows how much the average American contributes to the gyre of plastic in the ocean that includes tips on how we can reduce our impact. That type of content would capitalize a little on the scare tactics of the first post plus the spirit that we're all responsible for the fate of the planet. It would also be a chance to test if posts that end with positive impacts are as shareable.
Or if everyone loved your recipe for a ginormous Reese's Cup (21k+ shares), don't be tempted to write about chocolate peanut butter pie. Rather, consider creating a series on revamped recipes for childhood favorites like an upscale Nanaimo Bar or incorporating Jello into a trifle.

The exception

There are times when a piece of content you've created goes viral even though you feel like you only took the idea halfway. Playbuzz got some really good traction (1.6 million shares) with this post:

About a month later they followed up with this one which garnered 3.3 million shares:

They could have taken the idea even farther with "What Sci-Fi Novel…" and "What Horror Novel…" but those get weird fast and it's safe to say they found their peak audience the second time around by getting more general. So they stopped while they were ahead.

Build relationships

Viral success means that a whole lot of people just shared your content. It also means that you have a huge opportunity to connect with people who might remember who you are for the next five seconds.

Help them remember you for the foreseeable future by reaching out now and thanking them for sharing your stuff or engaging them in conversation. Ask what they'd like to see next time or respond to their questions. Be playful and friendly (if it suits your corporate voice) and get the writer to help you with the follow-up.

Use your success as brand leverage

There's no better time for PR outreach than immediately following a big viral content win. Who doesn't want to drop a line in an outreach email like "Our latest infographic has earned 452,000 shares on Pinterest (so far)." That number might feel like a fluke, but if you can get someone from a major media outlet interested in your next piece, your future looks bright.

Keep trying

Capturing the zeitgeist well enough to give a post viral success is not an easy thing. But have confidence that if you've done it before, you have what it takes to do it again. Keep making awesome stuff. And when you're tempted to get bummed because something doesn't quite find its audience, instead milk that learning experience for all it's worth.

Source:https://moz.com/blog/viral-content-next-steps

How To Remove Backlinks Of the Website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 15 May 2015 22:31:00 -0700

Backlinks are Most Essential Part of the Website ,Backlinks Increases the Traffic of website as well as its visibility factor in Search Engines. Its Good to have quality Backlinksto the website from Higher page rank or domain Authority of the website . Its better to have a backlinks to the website from our niche .Removing Backlinks Is not Going to be an easy task .Tthere are few Steps will Discuss Below

1. Manual Method

2. Email to webmasters

3. Disavow Method

Before starting This Let me tell you About Google penguin, This is the Google Algorithm which penalises the website which has bad or spam badlinks .If your Website got affected with Penguin algorithm Need not worry You can remove Your backlinks with these following steps .

1.Manual Method: In this manual method of removing backlinks first we should collect all the backlinks from webmastertools or from some external tools like Href,Backlinkwatcher etc etc...

maintain an excel sheet of those becklink websites and find out manually which link or domain is working and which is not working.

Contact the people who has done off-page of this website and take the credentials from them and log on to each website and manually deleate your AD. If some websites doesnt have log-in then see the step 2. This is the ideal method and simple method for removing the backlinks of the certain websites.

2. Email To webmasters: This is the second method and challenging method in this backlink Removal

After collecting the websites list and maintaining the Excel sheet ,only thing we can do is search for the contact details of the webmaster of the particular websites and Email Them Requesting them removal of your link from there websites .

Few Examples Of how Template should be

Template 1

From: yourname@mysite.com

Subject line: Please remove a link.

Hi,

I’m working on cleaning my website, and I need your help in removing some links from your site. Your site is probably perfectly legitimate, but I’m just trying to eliminate as many links as possible.

Here’s the page on your site with the link: www.example.com/randompage

Here’s the page on my site that you’ve linked to: www.mysite.com/randompage

The link need to be actually removed, rather than just disavowed. Even if they are “nofollow,” I’d still like them removed.

Once you’ve removed the link, please send me a quick note so I can create a record of it.

Thanks in advance! I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Yourname

Template 2

Hello,

My name is [Insert name] and I am responsible for the website [Insert URL].

The reason why I am contacting you is the content of the following link that points towards [Name of company]:

[Insert Link]

I would like to thank you very much for writing about our company but at the same time ask you to add a rel=”nofollow” attribute or eliminate the link.

I would also like to clarify that you are not the only person that we contact and we just want to make sure that our website’s reliability will not be decreased due to the new Penguin updates.

Please get in touch as soon as possible to confirm that you received the email and removed the link. The alternative solution for us would be to send a Disavow Link report to Google which is something that would also decrease your rankings.

Thank you for the understanding.

[Insert Signature]

Request The webmaster with your first mail and wait for 1month for his reply if you didn't get any reply from the webmaster then Park him the Second mail which will be somewhat warning to him .

If you still Didnt Got any reply from the webmasters then refer step 3.

Note: before reporting every Link Just go through the website completely and report it. Only thing we have to do is to find the website which are SPAMS.

Some Examples of the Websites which can be considered as Spam Websites

1. Websites which opens in the different language and its not translatable (ex: chinese language websites)

2. Websites when opens finds nothing in that except a search button to find something

3. when you open a website it automatically opens another website ,where the given URl and displayed URL is Different

3. Disavow Method: This is the last and final Method in Backlink Removal . We should try this method only after Trying all the Above Methods. In this method we have to report domains or links which are not working, which are spamming and website domains which are not willing to remove our link after so many requests from our side .

So How to do Disavow method

domain:ABC.com

domain:bcd.eu

domain:123.net

This is the format we will be reporting the domains to the Disavow tool in webmasters.

collect all the list of domains which you are going to report and save it as .TXT file with UTI code 8

So Be careful About removing Backlinks and Dont go to the Disavow tool directly with out following First two steps .

20 Best WordPress Plugins for 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 23:26:00 -0700

Are you looking for the must have WordPress plugins used by WordPress experts? Well, then you’re in the right place. In this article, our expert team has hand-picked the best WordPress plugins for 2015.

Choosing the best plugin for your WordPress site will help make your day-to-day life easier and deliver a better experience for your users as well.

Having that said, let’s take a look at the top WordPress plugins for 2015.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

WordPress SEO is not just an SEO plugin, it is the complete website optimization package. Apart from adding titls and descriptions to your articles, it also allows you to add open graph meta data, do page analysis, publish xml sitemap, and so much more. It is easy to install and setup and that’s why we use it on all our websites

2. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is the easiest and most beginner friendly WordPress backup andmigration plugin. It allows you to quickly setup automatic backup schedule for your website. You can store your backups on the cloud and sleep easily, knowing all your content is backed up. See how to keep your WordPress content safe with BackupBuddy.

3. W3 Total Cache

Your site’s speed plays an important role in search engine rankings. W3 Total Cache helps you optimize your WordPress site for speed and performance. It allows you to easily setup page and browser caching, compress pages for quicker downloads, and setup a content delivery network for your static files. See our guide on how to install and setup W3 total Cache for beginners.

4. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is the most beginner and developer friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. It can be used to add almost any kind of online form to your WordPress website. It comes with powerful add ons which allow you to create online survey,user submitted posts, web directory, or almost anything where a user input is required.

5. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best lead generation plugin for WordPress (See how it helped us increase our email subscribers by 600%). It allows you to create beautiful optin forms and popups for your WordPress website and convert your users into subscribers. It comes packed with features like page-level targetting, analytics, split testing, and exit intent technology which allows you to display optin form when a user is about to leave your site.

6. Edit Flow

Edit Flow provides an efficient editorial workflow management system for WordPress. It allows you to see your editorial calendar, manage authors, assign posts, leave editorial comments, and much more. You can create your own custom post status and plan your content strategy with in your WordPress dashboard.

7. Soliloquy

Soliloquy is the best responsive WordPress slider on the market. Most slider plugins will slow down your website which would hurt your SEO. Soliloquy, on the other hand, is the fastest slider plugin which loads your sliders at blazing fast speeds. It comes packed with features and even has a free version that you can try on right away.

8. Sucuri

We use Sucuri to monitor the security of our websites. Any website on the internet can get hacked or attacked by malicious denial of service attacks. It is better to be prepared than sorry. Sucuri offers real time alerts, website security scanner, and even offers malware removal service. Take a look at the 5 reasons why we use Sucuri to improve our WordPress security.

9. Floating Social Bar

Most social media plugins for WordPress come with a lot of bloat. With countless social networks that no body wants, and unnecessary scripts that slow down your website. Floating Social Bar is the best social media plugin for WordPress, it allows you to add only a handful of social networks that really matter. It is highly optimized for speed so that your social buttons don’t slow down your website.

10. Disqus

The default WordPress commenting system works well for websites with fewer visitors. However, for larger sites with lots of user comments you are better off with Disqus commenting system. It is a third party commenting system, which means comments will not affect your server. It does not affect your site’s page speed and comes equipped with anti-spam filters. See our guide on how to add Disqus commenting system in WordPress.

11. AdSanity

AdSanity is a WordPress ad management plugin focused on ease-of-use. Adding new ads in Adsanity is very similar to adding a post. It comes with with widgets and shortcodes support to display ads, so you can display ads in sidebars, posts and pages. You can create either time-based ads (that run for a specific time) or infinite ads (that would keep running unless you remove them). It also has graphs and stats for ad views and clicks. If you’re looking to display advertisement in WordPress, then you should be using this plugin.

12. Envira Gallery

If you run a photography site or post a lot of images, then Envira Gallery is a must have plugin for you. Enivra Gallery is a responsive WordPress gallery plugin which allows you to create beautiful image galleries with lots of powerful effects, easy navigation, and responsive design. It loads brilliantly fast and looks pretty on all devices. There is also a free version called Envira Gallery Lite which you can try right away. See our guide on how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries with Envira.

13. Login Lockdown

By default, a user can try to login into your site with as many incorrect attempts as they want. Most hack attempts usually rely on breaking into your site’s admin area by using password lists. Limit Login Attempts simply puts a limit on how many times a user can try to login. After a given number of login attempts it locks down the admin area for a limited time. Take a look at this tutorial on how to limit login attempts in WordPress.

14. Term Management Tools

Categories and tags, along with custom taxonomies play an important role in how you sort content on your website. However, many beginners don’t know thedifference between categories and tags and the SEO best practices on using them. This is where term management tools come in handy. It allows you to merge and bulk edit categories, tags, and custom taxonomies.

15. TablePress

WordPress post editor does not come with a button to create tables. If you need to insert tables in WordPress, then you would need TablePress plugin for that. It allows you to easily create tables with in WordPress, add them to your posts, pages, and even widgets. You can also export your table data if you need. Check out this tutorial on how to add tables in WordPress posts and pages without writing any HTML or CSS.

16. WPtouch

WPtouch offers a mobile suite for WordPress that gives your website the powerful features and capabilities that responsive themes simply cannot match. If you want to create a mobile version of your website, then WPtouch is your answer. It has built-in support for eCommerce, mobile-advertising, custom content, and most importantly it allows you offer an app for your site without the App Store. See our tutorial onhow to use WPtouch.

17. Compact Archives

By default WordPress creates a long bulleted list of your monthly archives. If you have been blogging for a while, adding monthly archives would make users scroll a lot. Compact Archives solves this problem by displaying your monthly archives in a compact block. Checkout this tutorial on how to create compact archives in WordPress.

18. ThirstyAffiliates

If you want to make affiliate marketing one of the main source of income for your site, then you need an affiliate link management tool. ThirstyAffiliates is the best affiliate link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to easily add affiliate links, cloak links, auto insert on certain keywords, and even export your links. See our guide on how to add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates.

19. Display Widgets

Sometimes you need to display or hide a widget on certain pages. Display Widgets allows you to easily show or hide widgets on selected pages and posts. You can even show widgets only to logged in users and hide for everyone else. Take a look at this tutorial on how to show or hide widgets on specific WordPress pages.

20. WP Mail SMTP

Due to configuration settings on some WordPress hosting providers, your WordPress emails may not get delivered. To solve this problem you would need WP Mail SMTP plugin. It allows you to use an SMTP server to send your WordPress emails instead of PHP’s mail() function. You can even use Gmail’s SMTP server to send your WordPress emails.

We hope this article helped you learn about the must have WordPress plugins for 2015. For tools beyond WordPress, take a look at these 40+ useful tools to manage and grow your blog

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Google+.

Source : http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/20-must-have-wordpress-plugins-for-2015-expert-pick/

Word press.org vs Free Word press .com

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 23:09:00 -0700

How To Create Word Press Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:53:00 -0700

How to create Word press Blog

1. Go to website url https://wordpress.com/

2. Click on create website

3. Enter the Desired Url (example: casetemplate1.wordpress.com)

4. Enter email ,user name,password and click on next step

5. If you are creating a blog just click on no thanks option(if you want to buy any custom templates etc etc choose the template and buy the certain template)

6. Choose the Desired theme (As per the categorie or industry of the blog or website you choose)

7. After setting up your theme just select the plans (free, premium,business) depending up on the budget constraints we select the plans default option will be free later on we can convert it to a premium or business depending up on the budget given by a client or ourself Free option never expires but as for premium and business plans are concerned they have certain time period to renew the amount or validity.(so best advantage is always go with free option

8. Click on customize template there you can add the site title ,tagline and Logo

Creating Pages In Word Press Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:52:00 -0700

Creating the pages

There are two ways of creating the pages

1. Static Pages : For static no posts will be updated daily, weekly monthly yearly etc. its data is default no changes done for example describing about company policies.

2. Dynamic Pages: In this we will be updating the information daily .daily posting the articles videos and present market updates .

For Static pages Just go to the Pages option and create a new page like(About us, Services, Contact us etc …..)

For dynamic pages we need to create a pages as well as categories with the same names.

After creating pages and categories go to the menu option and select the categories option and select the names which you want to update daily and click on add to menu . with this we can see the menu of pages and categories.

How to Do Posts And Redirect Pages in Word press blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:51:00 -0700

How to post and redirect the post to the pages

Go to post click on new post and write a post on some article or videos.

Before publishing the posts select the categories in which you want your post to get on or represent ex:. I created a post on seo marketing and I selected the categories as seo (this name should also be there in the categorie list). Click on publish and see the post where it redirects .

How to add verification codes for word press blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:50:00 -0700

How to add verification codes (google, Bing, pintrest, yandex …..)

Go to Tools ---- click on available tools---- Add verification codes from Google , Bing, Pintrest yandex etc ..etc.

Note: As this is word press blog we don’t have access to other web master codes like Alexa, flickr for verification

How to Add Sitemap for word press blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:49:00 -0700

As we are not using premium version of blogger or website we don’t have any access for plugins and other activities.

So same as Blogger we create sitemap.xml file for word press blog. Log on to google.com/webmaster tools and go to crawl option and select Sitemap and update the URL with sitemap.xml.

Example: http://www.abc.com/sitemap.xml.

Google analytics code for wordpress blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:49:00 -0700

Google Analytics

Unfortunately We cannot use google analytic's in Word press blog free version in order to use google analytic's we need to upgrade the blog from free to premium so that we can customize the analytic's using different plugins.

No plugins will be there for the free version of word press

Note : Plugins are not allowed in the word press blog for the security reasons so there is a limitation for everything in word press blog free plan.

How to Create Word press Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 5 May 2015 06:47:00 -0700

How to create Word press Blog

1. Go to website url https://wordpress.com/

2. Click on create website

3. Enter the Desired Url (example: casetemplate1.wordpress.com)

4. Enter email ,user name,password and click on next step

5. If you are creating a blog just click on no thanks option(if you want to buy any custom templates etc etc choose the template and buy the certain template)

6. Choose the Desired theme (As per the categorie or industry of the blog or website you choose)

8. Click on customize template there you can add the site title ,tagline and Logo

9. Creating the pages

There are two ways of creating the pages

1. Static Pages : For static no posts will be updated daily, weekly monthly yearly etc. its data is default no changes done for example describing about company policies.

2. Dynamic Pages: In this we will be updating the information daily .daily posting the articles videos and present market updates .

For Static pages Just go to the Pages option and create a new page like(About us, Services, Contact us etc …..)

For dynamic pages we need to create a pages as well as categories with the same names.

How to post and redirect the post to the pages

Go to post click on new post and write a post on some article or videos.

How to add verification codes (google, Bing, pintrest, yandex …..)

Go to Tools ---- click on available tools---- Add verification codes from Google , Bing, Pintrest yandex etc ..etc.

Note: As this is word press blog we don’t have access to other web master codes like Alexa, flickr for verification

How to Add Sitemap for word press blog

As we are not using premium version of blogger or website we don’t have any access for plugins and other activities.

So same as Blogger we create sitemap.xml file for word press blog. Log on to google.com/webmaster tools and go to crawl option and select Sitemap and update the URL with sitemap.xml.

Example: http://www.abc.com/sitemap.xml.

Tags In wordpress

Tags are nothing but a set of keywords or key phrases which represents the posts in the pages or categories .

Google Analytics

No plugins will be there for the free version of word press

Note : Plugins are not allowed in the word press blog for the security reasons so there is a limitation for everything in word press blog free plan.

Idigitalmarketing medigitalmarketing seo sem ppc seo online training

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 22:02:00 -0700

Idigitalmarketing medigitalmarketing seo sem ppc seo online training

Why digital Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 21:51:00 -0700

Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices (computers) such as personal computers, smartphones, cellphones, tablets TV and game consoles to engage with stakeholders. A component of Digital marketing is Digital Brand Engagement. Digital marketing applies technologies or platforms such as websites, e-mail, apps (classic and mobile) andsocial networks. Digital Marketing can be through Non-internet channels like TV, Radio, SMS, etc or through Internet channels like Social Media, E-mails ads, Banner ads, etc. Social Media Marketing is a component of digital marketing. Many organizations use a combination of traditional and digital marketing channels; however, digital marketing is becoming more popular with marketers as it allows them to target and track many aspects^[1] including their Return on Investment (ROI) more accurately compared to other traditional marketing channels.

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, Digital Marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers and businesses.

How To Create Quality Content For Website and Optmize seo Friendly

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 07:23:00 -0700

Quality Content Factors: A List That’s Actually Helpful

We’re all chasing “quality content,” but what does that actually look like? Columnist Nate Dame explores 20 concrete characteristics of great content.

We’re all chasing “quality content” — but what does that actually look like? In an apparent effort to help publishers cope with Google’s intensified focus on “content quality” as a ranking factor, the search giant released a notoriously unhelpful list of questions that publishers should ask themselves when developing content.

Bing was a little more resourceful with their more recent guidelines for quality content. But there are still plenty of holes.

So, here’s my attempt to one-up Google and Bing — a list of twenty concrete, proven characteristics to help content creators hit the formerly-elusive Quality Content mark.

1. Help The User Complete A Specific Task

Create content geared toward a clearly defined keyword + user intent combination, rather than a list of arbitrary keywords. Understanding how to discover user intent, and organizing that data, will enable you to design content that leads the user quickly and efficiently to his/her next step.

2. Organize Thematic Subsections

Google’s fight against keyword stuffing has led to smart algorithm updates that recognize authoritative topical content by identifying keyword synonyms and related terms and phrases.

Help search engines decipher your page by identifying the most important related keywords, and structuring each into its own subsection.

3. Make Sure It’s “Made To Stick”

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck, authors Chip and Dan Heath outline a framework to identify if an idea is “sticky.”

The six concepts central to “sticky” content (central to “SUCCES”) ask if it is Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and/or uses Stories.

4. Write A Strong Title & H1

It can be tempting to get creative and/or clever with your titles, but readers don’t have time to decipher subtleties. Be clear and concise, and make sure to use a tool like Moz’s Title Tag Preview Tool or Portent’s SERP Preview Tool, to make sure it’s not too long.

5. Make Sure It Inspires, Educates And/Or Entertains

A combination of two or three of those qualities is even better, but — especially for starters — identify the primary purpose of the content and be faithful to it.

This one has a lot to do with titles too: make sure the title and headers set the reader up for the kind of content you’re providing.

6. Ask Yourself If You Would Share It

Great content has inherent, spreadable value. Intentions aside, does the content actually speak to you? Would the people in your social networks — friends and/or industry contacts — be interested in it?

7. Make Sure It’s Relevant

Hopefully this doesn’t really need to be said, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been caught off-guard by clever media, or a guest post, that doesn’t seem to have much to do with a brand’s niche or a website’s topic.

Don’t sacrifice relevancy in an attempt to be entertaining.

8. Watch Your Word Count

There are no hard-and-fast rules here, of course, and the very best thing you can do is test different content lengths with your unique audience. In general, longer content seems to be the favorite. In terms of ranking, about 1000 words seems to be ideal, according to Searchmetrics’ 2014 ranking factors study.

For social shares, 1500 words is even better, according to a piece written by Neil Patel on the Quicksprout blog.

But user experience is always priority #1. Don’t compromise quality in an effort to hit a certain word count, and don’t take any study results as the final word for your particular audience.

9. Write For Your Audience (Not Your Peers)

This is a special challenge in tech and niche industries. SEO, for example, written for SEO experts is much different from SEO written for business owners and traditional marketers.

If your audience is industry professionals, don’t talk down to them. If your audience is not familiar with the details of your expertise, don’t get fancy and lose them in technical jargon.

10. Proofread!

(My editorial team made sure I included this one.) It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing this, everyone misses a keystroke or reverses characters once in a while.

Double-check for spelling and grammatical errors. Nothing erodes professionalism and credibility like a simple mistake that you were too lazy to correct.

11. Ease Up On The Primary Keyword

Keyword stuffing was never a good idea, and Panda keeps knocking it down further. Still, lazy writing can lead to unintentional keyword stuffing too, especially in headers.

Once your content is written, do a Command+F/Ctr+F search for your primary keyword(s) to make sure it’s not saturating the page. Rewrite or replace with synonyms as needed.

12. Fact-Check

Click those links one more time and just make sure that a digit didn’t get copied incorrectly, andcheck the date on any study you’re citing.

Every topic and industry will have different definitions of “old,” but don’t cite social media statistics from 2008. This goes for new and existing content.

Check your analytics periodically, and look for old content that may still be performing well. Go back to those blog posts and make sure they’re up-to-date!

13. Clearly Define Author(s) On The Page

Google Authorship may be a thing of the past, but Author Rank is still a factor.

A picture and a short bio on every piece of content will give search engines the information they’re looking for and enhance the user experience.

14. Check The AlchemyLanguage API

Make sure the AlchemyLanguage API is identifying entities, keywords, and concepts as expected.

AlchemyAPI offers a great tool that displays what Google’s crawlers probably see when examining your website.

15. Don’t Send Mixed Messages

Make sure each page stays on-topic. This ties in with understanding user intent — and creating unique content to help each intent complete a specific goal.

But if you haven’t gotten that far, it applies to existing content as well. Don’t throw a sales pitch in the middle of resource content.

16. Link To Good Sources

Practicing SEOs know this, of course, but it deserves to be on any content checklist. Make sure the content links out to a reasonable number of reputable, high-quality sources.

17. Link Natural Phrases

Make sure those outbound links are using natural phrases. Don’t stuff the <a href> with keywords, and don’t hyperlink the word(s), “here” or, “click here.”

18. Avoid Bad Sidebar Content

There is reason to believe that supplemental or sidebar content that is useless or distracting can cause an adverse reaction with a certain Panda.

19. Make It Visually Appealing

Text on the page should be broken up into bite-sized pieces: no long paragraphs, use headers consistently, indent quotes, use bullet points for lists, etc.

And make use of images and video wherever reasonably possible to add color and visual interest. (Just make sure your page design is supporting your SEO strategy.)

20. Offer Unique Value (Not Just Unique Content)

Any good writer can rearrange words on a page to create content that doesn’t technically appear anywhere else on the internet.

But good content offers a unique value by providing readers with insights and actionable takeaways that no one else does. Does “unique value” sound difficult? Well, it is, but it must be done.

Bonus: What Makes Content ‘Thought Leadership’

Moving from high-quality content to thought-leadership material doesn’t necessarily mean going wider as much as it does going deeper. The checklist doesn’t get much longer, but each element becomes weightier. If you haven’t had enough yet, Bob Buday from The Bloom Group shared his team’s eight requirements for thought-leadership material.

Relevance – Addressing a burning issue for your target audience
Novelty – Having a fundamentally new way to solve a problem
Depth – Possessing substantial knowledge about the problem and how to solve it
Validity – Proving your solution works through real examples of companies that have solved it your way with measurable benefits
Practicality – Demonstrating you have a well-thought-out approach to solving the problem, and understand how to overcome the obstacles to adoption
Rigor – Having hard-to-dispute logic about the problem and the best way to solve it
Clarity – Communicating the point of view in words your target audience understands
Coherence – Having frameworks or models that simplify the problem and/or solution

Does every blog post need to meet all eight of those criteria? Does every content asset you publish need to reflect all 20 of the factors above? Perhaps not, but the more you can hit, the better chance you have of appeasing (Google head of Webspam) Matt Cutts’ (and the real world’s) demand for quality content.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Your First Steps In Content Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 07:14:00 -0700

Your First Steps In Content Marketing

New to content marketing and not sure where to begin? Columnist Eric Enge provides a helpful outline for SEOs (or anyone) looking to start incorporating this crucial digital marketing tactic.

Any successful SEO strategy still requires a promotional component — something that builds your business’ reputation and visibility while also netting you links to your website. Yet, we still live in a world where most businesses don’t truly engage in content marketing. In today’s post, I am going to outline how you can get started with such a campaign.

Whether you are in a large enterprise or a small business, it can be difficult to launch a large-scale campaign. While the enterprise has a larger overall marketing budget, the money in that budget is tightly allocated and is likely already spoken for. Pulling a big pile of dollars out to spin up a major content marketing effort is just not going to happen overnight.

The big advantage that a small business has is that once the decision to pursue content marketing is made, making it a priority is quite a bit easier. However, the total number of dollars in the budget is probably still limited.

In either scenario, it’s inevitable that the great majority of businesses will need to start slowly. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the first few priorities in getting going with a content marketing campaign that also has a major impact on SEO.

Your Top 4 Priorities

When pursuing content marketing to support your SEO needs, just be aware that directly chasing links with it can turn into a big “uh-oh.” This often leads to the type of behavior that caused Googler John Mueller to say this about link building: “In general, I’d try to avoid that.”

To be fair, a lot of what is driving John’s response is the pursuit of links for links sake. Let’s back up, and instead look at the key priorities you can set for yourself so that your content marketing will head in the right direction. Here are your top four:

Build Your Reputation. When people think about your brand, you want them thinking good thoughts. You can use content marketing to help build that image on your behalf.
Build Your Visibility. Content marketing can help build your visibility in many ways. The basic concept is to create content that people are going to want to share with others (via social media and other means), and this gets you exposure to new people.
Build Your Audience. As I discuss below, there are many ways to build your reputation and visibility by publishing content on other platforms (other people’s websites and social media, for example). In the long run, though, this is rented real estate. You need to build your own set of fans who will look for your content wherever you may end up publishing it.Audience growth is incredibly important, as your audience will help you gain exposure to more and more new audiences. Every time you post and share you will get a ripple effect like this one:

Be Approachable. Reputation, visibility, and audience are all great, but you also need to be perceived as approachable. You can have thousands, or millions, of raving fans, but if they are afraid to engage with you, it will limit the business benefit of what you have accomplished. Make sure you engage with others — influencers and non-influencers — so the audience at large understands that you are not sitting in some ivory tower.

Getting these four parts of your strategy right is essential. Over the long run, it’s what will lead to the best quality links with the least possible risk. It’s one of those odd things that sometimes happens in life — the less you focus directly on what you want (in this case, high-value links), the more of them you will get.

Guest Posting Is A Great Place To Start

As I laid out earlier, new content marketing campaigns don’t materialize out of thin air suddenly staffed with five full-time people. Inevitably, you will be given limited resources and asked to prove its value (and to prove your ability to execute it).

Getting started with a simple guest posting campaign may be the best way to get off the ground. To me, this means establishing one or two monthly columns on some of the top sites that cover your market (and that reach your target audience). Note the emphasis on columns here.

Writing a column on a high authority site that reaches your target audience is a great way to start working on the four priorities I outlined above. It enables you to build your reputation by publishing content that helps solve problems for others. Your visibility increases for the simple reason that you are being given a platform on someone else’s website — in front of their audience.

This content can build your audience because some of the people on that third-party website will hunger for more from you. This is the first step in them becoming your audience. This graphic gives you some idea how guest posting in the right places leads to growing your audience:

Finally, provided that you respond to comments and questions about your content, it causes people to see you as being approachable, too.

Note: Yes, I know that Matt Cutts said to “stick a fork” in guest blogging for SEO — but. per our top four priorities, that’s not what we are doing here. Remember our focus: Reputation, Visibility, Audience, and Approachability.

Social Media Visibility Is A Great Place To Start, Too

The other easy place to get engaged early on is with social media. Like guest posting, this is not going to immediately cause money to come pouring into your business, but it will help you get started on each of your top four priorities.

As with guest columns, you need to focus on using social media to help people, not simply turn it into a broadcast medium where you spout your old-world marketing messages. This will help grow your reputation, visibility, and audience all at once. Here is a visual for how social media helps you develop your own audience:

Provided that you respond to comments and interact with others via social media, it will show people that you are approachable as well.

Beyond Guest Posting and Social Media

Guest posting and social media are a great start because they give you exposure to other people’s audiences (OPA). In other words, you are going where the crowds of your prospective customers and future fans are already present. You’re publishing your content in front of that audience, helping solve problems for them, and starting the process of building your own audience.

But these are rented audiences. As we have seen with Facebook, when their need to generate revenue became paramount, they started taking organic visibility away from brands to drive traffic into their ad platform. Other social media platforms have begun to follow suit. Even that guest column could potentially be taken away from you in the future.

For that reason, it’s important to evolve into other types of content marketing campaigns and work on building an audience directly on your site. This is the key shift from addressing OPA to addressing your own audience.

A detailed description of how to do that is beyond the scope of this particular post, but if you have done your job well with guest columns and social media, you will have established a strong foundation that you can use to bring your campaigns to the next level.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Top Seo Pages In Google Plus

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 06:25:00 -0700

In this post we take a closer look at the 10 most popular Google+ pages about SEO (either personal or business pages) and we compare these with the most popular twitter and Facebook pages.

Google plus is the social network that most SEO’s prefer not only for search engine optimization purposes (think Google Authorship) but because it’s fun, informative and owned by Google. Some people may disagree that Google+ is one of the favourite tools of all Internet Marketers but the numbers below tell the truth and I will explain later in the post why.

Is Google+ good for SEO?

The first question we need to answer before getting into the details is whether Google+ is good for SEO. The answer is pretty straightforward, Google+ is (in my opinion) the most important social network for SEO for 4 main reasons:

It is owned by Google – While I am not suggesting that Google has a preference to G+ over other social networks because it owns it, the reason that it may play a more important role is because Google has all the data it needs about G+ profiles and pages – something not happening with the data on Facebook and Twitter.
Google Authorship – I have mentioned many times in my posts the importance of Google Authorship as a ranking factor and that fact that to implement authorship you need a G+ profile automatically raises the importance of Google+ for SEO.
Good for Local SEO – In order to establish your Google+ for Business profile and get better positioning in local SEO you need to have a G+ business page.
Google recommendations – When you search Google while logged in you get recommendations based on your G+ circles. The same happens when you browse Google Play or Google Chrome store, so it is very important to have a good Google+ presence with many followers.

How to optimize your Google+ profile for SEO?

This is something I already explained in my post: How to SEO boost your social media profiles but in summary form, to make the most of your Google+ profile for SEO purposes you need to:

Upload in your profile a good headshot photo (or a good logo in case of Business pages)
Fill in all fields required in your profile including contact information and address
Add your website(s) in the ‘contributor to’ section
Link to your other profiles
Try to gain as many followers as you can by sharing interesting content

How Google+ compares with Facebook and Twitter?

I am sure that you’ve read articles from various Analysts referring to Google+ as a ghost town but is it true? Are the 359 million active users of Google+ ghosts and how do people in the SEO industry use Goolge+?

I think one of the ways to find answers to the above questions is to compare the number of followers for the same persons (or business pages) on the 3 major social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Google+). For those who need more information about FB and Twitter they can read my previous posts: 10 most popular Facebook pages and 10 most popular Twitter pages.

When you do the comparison the general findings are:

For pure SEO personas like Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts and SearchEngineLand, Google+ is by far the most important network (with the greatest number of followers).
Twitter is more popular than Facebook in ALL cases of our list
Google+ VS Facebook: In the cases that Google+ does not have more followers than Facebook it is still close to the Facebook figures (taking also into account that FB has been around for longer)

How I created the top 10 list with the most popular Google+ pages?

I have used both personal and business profiles in the list so as to see how these compare with the respective pages on Facebook and Twitter. These are the people/pages I follow to stay informed about the latest developments in SEO and a must for anyone interested about Google and Digital Marketing in general.

You can follow my personal profile on Google+ and Reliablesoft Business Page

Disclaimer: I am certain that there are many more Google+ pages that have more followers than the ones listed below and if you think that a page is missing do let me know in the comments and I can update the list accordingly. Google+ followers are as at 26 July 2013.

1. Danny Sullivan (1,775,750)

Facebook: 189,452

Twitter: 321, 245

Google+: 1,775,750

Danny is again first in my list (he is no1 in twitter SEO accounts as well). With the incredible 1.7 million followers he is by far the most important and well known person about Search Engine Optimization and Google related matters. If you take into account that Larry Page (Google’s co-founder) has 6.2 million followers then Danny’s circle count is not bad at all.

You can follow Danny here: https://plus.google.com/+DannySullivan/posts

2. Search Engine Land (518,859)

Facebook: 59,992

Twitter: 179,062

Google+: 518,859

I added Search Engine Land as well despite the fact that it is owned by Danny Sullivan because it is probably the most well-known website about SEO (if you add all 3 networks together). The quality of information provided by Danny, +Matt McGee, +Barry Schwartz and the rest of the team makes the website a great resource on SEO.

You can follow Search engine Land here: https://plus.google.com/+SearchEngineLand/posts

3. Matt Cutts (262,171)

Facebook:?

Twitter: 250,194

Google+: 262,171

I added Google’s Matt Cutts as I was curious to see how many followers he has on G+ compared to FB and Twitter. Apparently Matt does not have a Facebook account but his numbers on Twitter and G+ are comparable. Someone would expect to see a lot more G+ followers than twitter but he is still using twitter actively so the difference is not that big.

You can follow Matt Cutts here: https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts/posts

4. Darren Rowse – Problogger (140,542)

Facebook: 52,775

Twitter: 190,967

Google+: 140,542

Darren Rowse is one of the leaders in the blogging industry and the 140,000+ followers he has on G+ is no surprise. I was expecting more Facebook followers for Darren since he is among the first bloggers who talked about the importance of Social Media in a time where FB was on the rise and G+ did not even exist.

You can follow Darren here: https://plus.google.com/+DarrenRowse/posts

5. MOZ (51,790)

Facebook: 115,116

Twitter: 220,082

Google+: 51,790

Moz (previously known as SEO Moz) is very popular on FB and Twitter but on G+ it is still below the 100K mark. I don’t know if they had a Google+ page before re-branding from SEOMOZ to MOZ and if this is the reason they are low compared to their FB and Twitter numbers but I am sure that their follower count will increase in the next few months to the same levels as FB and Twitter.

You can follow MOZ here: https://plus.google.com/+SEOmoz/posts

6. Jeff Bullas (12,553)

Facebook: 16,688

Twitter: 164,885

Google+: 12,553

Jeff Bullas is the ultimate Twitter persona. His twitter followers are increasing on a daily basis and that’s why he has passed the 150K mark. Besides Twitter his Facebook and G+ followers are very close which is another proof that when it comes to SEO and Social Media Marketing, Google+ has nothing to be afraid off when compared to FB.

You can follow Jeff here: https://plus.google.com/109167101392398799057/posts

7. Search Engine Watch (10,416)

Facebook: 12,430

Twitter: 51,635

Google+: 10,416

With just over 10K followers search engine watch made it to the top 10 list. It is more popular on Twitter with G+ and FB to have around the same number.

You can follow Search Engine Watch here: https://plus.google.com/117807232814593418955/posts

8. Search Engine Journal (9,990)

Facebook: 40,660

Twitter: 38,310

Google+:9,990

Search engine Journal and the 2 last entries below (Brian Clark and Neil Patel) have three things in common. First is that they are popular in Twitter (Brian and Neil have over 100K followers), second is that they all have less than 10K G+ followers and third their G+ follower count is far below Facebook.

You can follow Search Engine Journal here: https://plus.google.com/112953633004578114474/posts

9. Brian Clark – Copyblogger (8,936)

Facebook: 23,748

Twitter: 140,144

Google+: 8,936

Brian is one the leaders in content marketing and besides running copyblogger he is also the owner of studiopress.com – one of the best frameworks (genesis) build on the WordPress platform.

You can follow Brian here: https://plus.google.com/+Copyblogger/posts

10. Neil Patel (8,734)

Facebook: 35,363

Twitter: 118,243

Google+: 8,734

Neil shares great advice for SEO’s and entrepreneurs and besides quicksprout he also runs Kissmetrics and neilpatel.com. He has worked with big companies producing great results and he is a must follow resource on SEO and digital marketing.

You can follow Neil here: https://plus.google.com/112759904453577892472/posts

Conclusion

Google+ is my favorite social network not only because it’s great for SEO but because it’s fun, interesting and easy to use. What I always advice my clients is to take advantage of Google+ to increase their website’s trust and business exposure on Google. If you are not already using G+ either for personal or business use, you should consider start using it without any further delay.

The World’s 10 most popular Google+ pages about SEO by Alex Chris

How to Improve business Using Social Media and Increase Followers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 06:21:00 -0700

One of the challenges that businesses face when it comes to social media marketing is how to gain more followers. How can you find people to follow your business page and most importantly how do you find people that interact with your pages and share your content?

To make this article more interesting I will not just discuss the theory of social media marketing but I will show you the results of a social media campaign we have been running for the last 10 months for an online business. I will try to explain the challenges that we had to overcome and the solutions that lead to a dramatic increase of followers on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

Company Profile

The company is knownhost.com, a web hosting provider offering managed VPS hosting packages to consumers since 2005.

The results

Example of how Twitter Followers increased over the last 6 months

When we started social media marketing for knownhost in November 2013 the company had:

400 followers on Facebook

480 followers on Twitter

200 followers on Google+

After 10 months (September 2014) the numbers are:

7300 followers on Facebook (1825% increase)

4018 followers on Twitter (837% increase)

900 followers on Google+ (450% increase)

The challenges

It was difficult to reach out to people who were not currently interested in our products (web hosting packages).
There is huge competition in the hosting industry
We needed a strategy to differentiate our company from the rest
We wanted more people to find out about our brand, products and services

3 Steps for a Successful social media marketing for businesses

The solution to the above challenges that lead to a dramatic increase in followers was to combine content marketing with a carefully planned social media campaign. Let’s see below the 3 steps that can almost guarantee you success.

Step 1: You need content

That may be obvious to many people: you need content to run social media campaigns, but for most businesses this is the most difficult part to achieve. The reason is that they have a lot of content about their products and services but not enough content that can be used for social media awareness.

People that use Facebook, Twitter or Google+ are less likely to follow a business page that only advertises their products and services, unless of course they are a big brand (think Apple) that sells popular products.

The solution here is to publish content on your business page that is interesting for people to read, share, comment and follow. In general, you can use content that is part of these 3 categories:

How-to articles
Industry news
Tips and advice

Take a look at the Google+ page to see how the above content rich categories can blend together with the products and services a company is offering. See how we share content about technology news, blogging, social media and everything that may interest our current and potential customers (bloggers, graphic designers, small business owners, webmasters etc).

Step 2: Content is not enough, you also need to promote your accounts

I know that I said above that you need content but content alone is not enough for social media success. You also need to promote your social media accounts and content.

What do we mean by promote? Don’t expect that by just creating and publishing good content on your business page people will start following you. You need to get out, spread the word and tell people about your interesting content. To be more specific:

On Facebook the best way to reach more audience is to use targeted ads. For those that are not aware, Facebook has an advertising platform which you can use to promote your business page or posts and get more likes, more website visits or more sales. What is nice about this system is that you can create targeted campaigns and get your page in front of the ‘right people’. In terms of cost, once you run a pilot campaign for a couple of weeks you will be able to predict how much budget you need to reach more audience on Facebook.

On Twitter the most efficient way to find targeted followers is to use the twitter search function and find out users tweeting about your industry, related products or competitors. Searching for hashtags instead of plain keywords can get you better results (i.e. search for ‘#socialmedia’ instead of ‘social media’). Once you find these people follow them and statistically some of them will follow you back.

You can follow the same approach for Google+ but have in mind that a business page can only follow 50 people per day so you need to follow a less aggressive approach to stay away from unwanted troubles.

Step 3: Monitor your brand and clean up your accounts

So, you have good content, you promote your accounts by advertising or reaching out to potential followers, what’s next?

The next step is to monitor what people say about your brand in the different networks and reply to any comments (either positive or negative). There are various ‘brand monitoring’ tools you can use but another easy way is to use the search function of the different networks and search for your brand name. Make sure that you do this on a daily basis and that you publish and share your replies so that other people can see that you have an active presence.

As a final step you also need to clean up your accounts on a regular basis. ‘By clean up’ I mean remove people that are not active or not related to your niche or business. On networks like Twitter it’s very difficult to find users that only tweet about your industry and niche so you need to regularly review who you follow and try to stick to people that are a better match to your customer profile.

Conclusion

Businesses can successfully use social media provided that they are willing to invest both time and money to establish their social media presence. Depending on the type of business, you can choose which networks to utilize but the recipe for success is always the same: Share useful content that goes beyond your products or services, promote your accounts, protect your brand and keep your accounts in good shape.

To go from theory to practice, take a closer look at what we have done with the knownhost case study and apply the same strategies to make your company a social business.

How businesses can gain more followers on social media (case study) byAlex Chris

Content In Seo And implementing Anchor Text ,Hidden Text and Keeping the content unique in seo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 06:11:00 -0700

Page Content:

Your page content does the talking to your online business prospects. Designing the structure and ensuring the quality of this content benefits you in all parts of website optimization; from usability and conversions to on-page SEO. In terms of SEO:

HTML to TEXT ratio:

It is an SEO best practice to have more text compared to HTML on your website. The formula used to calculate it is as follows:

HTML to Text Ratio = Text Size / Web Page Size x 100

A value between zero to 25 percent is considered a page with code bloat. The page needs more text.
A value between 25 to 70 percent is considered ideal.
A value of more than 70 percent means there is a lot of content and search engines may consider it to be spam.

Here is a list of some free HTML to text calculator providers:

Keyword Density:

Once you have your target keywords researched and ready to be inserted in the site content you need to know how many times a particular keyword must be used in order to rank highly. It used to be that the so-called SEO gurus would advise anywhere from two to 15 percent keyword density or even more. Those days are over.

The reality in today’s world of modern search engine algorithms is that the number of keyword recurrences does not matter. What really matters is how relevant it is to the context of the content where it is used. Watch this video on keyword density from webspam head of Google, Matt Cutts.

If you are confused follow this advice:

Write your content allowing the keywords to flow naturally into it.
Make sense grammatically when using keywords in your web page content. For instance, if your keyword is how do I improve my search rankings and you cannot place the first person reference in your content you might have to usehow to improve your search rankings within your page content. Better still you could say something like ‘if you are wondering “how do I improve my search rankings” here is….’
Content should be readable and must provide value.
You could check the keyword density of competitor sites that rank high in searches for some useful hints.

The following are some of the free keyword density checker tools:

Uniqueness:

The text in your page content must not be present elsewhere on the web i.e. it must be original and unique. Use one of the following tools to double check if your content is indeed unique:

If certain pages contain duplicate content that you cannot change, such as product pages on an e-commerce website, you must ensure that you indicate the preferred page as the original content. This must be done so that you do not end up with a duplicate content warning message in your Google Webmaster Tools.

You can indicate certain content as duplicate by adding an HTML tag calledrel=”canonical” on the duplicate pages (with the href containing the URL destination of the preferred original content).

This rule for duplicate content is true for Title tag and Description tag content as well, so ensure that the text in these tags are unique to each web page.

Hidden Text

Stay away from hidden text in your site content. Some of the hidden text tactics include matching the text with the background color, having a font size zero, including text behind images or including hidden text in CSS.

Sometimes hidden text may be placed on your website without you being aware of it. Learn how to detect hidden text on a website using the Web Developer Toolbar.

Anchor Text:

Anchor text are the words that are hyperlinked to a destination URL (a link either to an internal or external web page). It used to be general practice to link pages or sites with exact anchor text match i.e. the same keyword would appear on both the linked pages. This was a strong signal to search engines to rank the website highly for that keyword. Since this practice has been abused a lot lately, a variety in anchor text that is not only bound to your target keywords is preferred. It gives the impression of natural internal and external linking to the search engines.

NOTE: Make sure anchor text linking with exact-match keywords within web pages is limited to 50% of your total links on the web page.

For example, if your anchor text is “designer watches,” here are some anchor text variations you can use when you link:

Keyword (<50%) (Designer watches).
Brand Name (Watchshop).
Page URL (Watchshop.com, www.watchshop.com).
Long-tail keywords/partial anchor text match (best designer watches, designer watches discounts).
Generic words (click here, read more).
Generic words + Keywords (read more about Armani Designer Watches).
Info Source (article, source, video, website, report).
H1 of the linking page (ladies designer label watches).

It is tough to keep up with the ever-growing competition in organic searches if other websites often feature above you in search results. You need to keep abreast of the changing SEO trends and start planning for a wholesome SEO strategy. Building SEO Friendly website content is a quintessential part of this strategy.

Why I Frames ,Frames ,Flash, Popups are Bad For Seo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 06:03:00 -0700

10 Design Flaws Which Can Destroy a Site’s SEO

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When it comes to creating a new website, a key dilemma is whether the focus should be on fantastic Design and User Experience (UX), or on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are many cases where mind-blowing animated design negatively affects the site’s SEO. Whilst you may expect an increasing number of visitors on a better designed website, in reality you may see the opposite occur. In order to be successful, any website needs to perform well in search engines.

Therefore, searching for the compromise is essential.

Most web designers likely to ignore SEO as it limits their artistic possibilities. However, there is no need to cut down on design features for the sake of optimization. Designers can work in tune with SEO specialists and developers to find a formula that would meet both users’ wishes, and search engines’ requirements.

Additionally, there is another trap that must be avoided. Pre-existing sites with good SEO may have to reconsider their efforts during a redesign. Even the smallest of changes can create design errors that will hurt its SEO.

What are these errors? Here are the most common mistakes web designers make when not taking SEO into account:

Mistake #1 – Images Instead of Important Elements

Using images as a primary form of navigation will result in search engines treating them without their functional meaning. On the other hand, pure textual navigation is not a good option either.

The compromise is to use text-over-image techniques with CSS.

On top of this, when using headers, it is also not recommended to replace text with images. Content replaced by beautiful graphics with text may look outstanding, but it will not work for SEO. Header text is intended to highlight important keywords; Replacing them with images will devaluate the content.

Speaking generally about images as website content, it’s essential to know the basics of optimizing them for search engines without sacrificing the design. You can find some useful tips on image optimization here.

Mistake #2 – Lack of Breadcrumbs

A perfectly engineered breadcrumb trail will significantly increase a site’s SEO performance. Text links are easily read by search engines and provide a transparent hierarchical navigation structure. Unfortunately, designers often forget about breadcrumbs, despite the fact that they would noticeably increase the user friendliness of the site.

A good example of breadcrumbs on gameinformer.com

Mistake #3 – A Mobile Version of the Site

As mobile devices have gained more and more popularity in recent years, it’s important to take care of the mobile version of your site. This raises concern regarding whether it’s best to create a separate mobile site, or to use responsive design. According to Matt Cutts of Google, responsive design is a smarter choice for SEO needs. When the mobile version of the site does not perform well (ie. without “rel=canonical”), you can end up with PageRank divided between two pages. This is impossible when using responsive design thanks to using just one URL.

Mistake #4 – Frames

It’s hard to believe there are still websites made with frames. Not only did they become obsolete years ago, but they also won’t act in your favor in website SEO-wise. Frame make it difficult for search engines to read your site with valuable content hidden. As framed websites use three html files instead of one, this causes conflicts with indexation.

The world’s worst website definitely uses frames

Mistake #5 – Improper 404 Page

Creating custom 404 pages is always a possibility to add extraordinary humorous ideas for web designers. But in search of some light relief, they often forget to include the necessary elements.

For example, navigation elements – a link to return to the website. Not only will it improve the user experience, but will also improve the SEO. Otherwise, search engines will find your site contains broken internal links that will reduce its search ranking.

Mistake #6 – Too Much Flash

Visually attractive Flash is still badly indexed by search engines. Surely, your website can contain Flash, but it is recommended not to use it for important content and navigation – and definitely don’t make the entire site Flash. However, it is always up to you to prioritize visual or SEO issues.

Beautiful grimoire.jp Flash design

But the good news is that unlike Flash, HTML5 is SEO-friendly and Google successfully indexes HTML 5 content. Several advantages of HTML5 for SEO are reviewed here.

Mistake #7 – Improper Video Embedding

Whilst video content is a great way to engage your audience, it doesn’t always help your SEO. Specifically, custom Java media players are not readable by search engines. The optimal way is embedding videos directly from YouTube which is owned by Google.

Mistake #8 – Pop-Ups

To begin with, pop-ups are a big no no for designers to use. They are equally badly treated by visitors and search engines. They are annoying and usually closed by most users the moment they appear. Moreover, they immediately evoke prejudice about the website. Search engines don’t even index pop-ups as a part of the site. You can always find another place to put pop-up content on your site; just forget about pop-ups altogether for your own sake.

Mistake #9 – Geo-Redirection

Multi-language sites often use automatic geo-redirection which reads a users’ location and the language of their computer to redirect towards the website with the appropriate locale. Although this is convenient, redirecting away from your home page will hurt SEO. The best way to cope with this problem is to let users manually pick their location.

Mistake #10 – Neglecting Heading Tags

Heading tags are used not only for visual emphasis of content, but have a considerable impact on SEO as well. Saying that search engines like H1 tags means that Google gives them a higher importance. The proper use of H tags includes putting keywords into H1 tag and not using it for a company name or styling purposes.

Generally, all of the mistakes mentioned above are the result of one major mistake which is to consider SEO after designing a website. SEO must be treated as one of the components of a design. A designer can create perfect artwork, but it’ll be absolutely worthless if nobody can find it.

Image:

Text present within images does no good for SEO. If you want your website’s images to be search engine optimized, you need to include a description of the image in the alt text attribute of the image’s HTML, as shown below:

An Example of the Use of Alt Tags for Images

The following are some important points to note for SEO-friendly images:

You must include text that is related to the content around it. For example, if you have an image of a formally dressed and well-groomed woman and your site talks about ‘young entrepreneurs,’ describe the image as young entrepreneurs of today and not as smart looking young woman.
If the image is used for bullet lists or any other decorative purposes you can leave the alt attribute empty i.e. alt=“ “
If you have images of decorative text, add the same text in the alt attribute.
Keep the alt text content short and descriptive
For logos, describe the image as ‘Company Name.’
Use relevant keywords in context with the content on the page where it is displayed.
Choose an appropriate file name for the images. Avoid hyphens or underscores.
Label the file extension, for instance, “.jpg” (JPEG) so that search engines know it is a photo or “.gif” (GIF) so that search engines know it is a graphic.
If you have a really long description to add to your site’s visuals, learn more about the longdescattribute here.

The Growth Of Direct Answers: How Should SEOs React?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 07:45:00 -0700

More and more often, SERPs are including answers, not just links to answers. Columnist Mark Traphagen recaps an SMX West panel that explores the effects.

Remember that annoying student when you were in school? The one who sat in the front row and raised his hand for every question before you could?

In the eyes of many site owners, Google has become that student.

For an increasing number of search queries requesting factual information Google (and to a lesser extent, Bing) is returning answers at the top of search results pages that (usually) don’t require any click-through by the searcher.

This could be seen as a serious threat to sites that have been accustomed to getting organic search traffic by providing that kind of information. In fact, SEO Glenn Gabe documented a dramatic drop in traffic for several song lyrics sites after Google started displaying lyrics as a direct answer.

However, other webmasters see Google’s direct answers in search as a new opportunity to get a jump on the competition and become featured for free by Google.

At this year’s SMX West conference in San Jose, three experts who have been keeping a very close eye on developments with Google’s direct answers reported their findings and provided advice as to what site owners can do to take best advantage of a search feature that will only continue to grow in its influence.

This post will give you the main ideas and takeaways from each of their talks. You will also find an embed of each speaker’s slide deck so you can get further detail and see their examples.

The panel:

Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting @stonetemple (full disclosure: my employer)

Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing for Go Fish Digital, @bill_slawski

Ehren Reilly, Director of Product, Growth at Glassdoor, @ehrenreilly

Eric Enge revealed findings from a recent study he conducted, while Bill Slawski provided a deep dive into possible sources for Google’s direct answers. Finally, Erhren Reilly shared some ways his company has been using direct answers to their advantage.

What’s New With Direct Answers In Search By Eric Enge

Eric Enge shared the results from a recent Stone Temple Consulting study that submitted over 850,000 questions to Google and Bing search to see how many yielded direct answers.

Direct answers or “rich answers” are a special result at the top of the first search results page that provides a brief answer to a question query that (in most cases) does not require a click through to a web site.

The questions were generated as follows:

250,000 each came from Google’s and Bing’s auto suggest features
The rest were generated via brainstorming by the Stone Temple research team

For the latter set of question, the team compiled a huge list of persons, places, and things, and then generated various questions a real person might want to know about those things. For example, for “Eiffel Tower” questions used might include “when was the Eiffel Tower built?” and “where is the Eiffel Tower located?”

Their finding: Google returned direct answers 19.4% of the time. Bing provided them for 1.1% of the queries used.

Enge remarked that they saw a great variety of answer types, including tabbed menus and movie times.

He reported that in over 3000 cases, the direct answer was incomplete, with an ellipsis that links to the originating site. For example:

Over 1000 were in the form of a table, such as this one for World Series Winners:

Other types of rich answer boxes found in the study included:

Linked tables (or “sliders”) – 6,740 results: search Google for “what time zone is Russia?” on a desktop browser and click one of the displayed time zones. Notice that a knowledge panel for that time zone opens in the right sidebar.
List or step-by-step – 1,871 results: Search Google for “okra boiled” and you get a three-step recipe. By the way, all of the observed examples of this type linked to a third-party source. In many of these some of the steps themselves were incomplete, with a linked ellipsis, or a “more items” link at the bottom.
Rich answer box plus a sidebar knowledge panel – 45,132 results: Search Google for “who is Rin Tin Tin?”
A form – 5,356 results: Try “how many calories in a pepperoni pizza” or “mortgage calculator.”
Charts – 33 results: Try “GDP of the USA.”
Carousel – 4,284 results: Try “roster for the boston red sox.”
Link to follow on actions – 172 results: These rich answer boxes included a direct link to a resource, such as an app download. Try searching “youtube account maker.”
Image in result – 36,392 results: Try “when will Jupiter Ascending be released?”
Related items shown: These results include a bar with thumbnail image links to searches that are related to the current search. For an example, try searching “capacity of allstate arena.”

Enge said about 75% of the direct answer boxes viewed in the study included attribution links to the original source. Example of types that didn’t included song lyrics and public domain info (such as “What is the capital of Washington state?”). A Google representative told Eric that Google only shows song lyrics for songs for which they have obtained proper rights.

Enge concluded with some thoughts about the potential impact of these direct answers on publishers:

Don’t try to make a living on public domain info
Even licensed info is vulnerable (e.g., song lyrics)
Could be good if your site is selected for a partial answer with a link, which might actually drive traffic to your site

Eric Enge’s slide deck for this presentation:

What’s New With Direct Answers In Search from Search Marketing Expo – SMX

The Growth of Direct Answers: How Should SEOs Evolve? By Bill Slawski

Are query results better if Google provides a direct answer in addition to the regular results? Bill Slawski opened with this question. He noted that providing direct answers was listed as a positive in Google’s Q4 earning statement.

Google claimed that providing such answers “makes it quicker, easier, and more natural to find what you’re looking for.” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, in “We Built Google for users, Not Websites,” stated that Google would be providing more or these direct answers because “it’s quicker and less hassle than the ten blue links” Google has traditionally shown.

Slawski also referenced a patent filed by Google Israel last year, titled “Natural Language Search Results for Intent Queries.” He found it interesting how the patent authors determined authoritative sources. In particular they cited as authoritative pages which:

were frequently selected in search results
consistently rank high in search results for related topics

The Israeli researchers built templates with different forms of the same question. They then looked for pages that consistently rank higher for all those forms. High ranking pages were put into a data store, listed by headings (such as “What are the symptoms of Mono?”) and answers (the concise list of symptoms).

What are the potential benefits of having your content appear as a direct answer? Slawski listed three:

Additional chance to be seen in search.
Opportunity to be seen as authoritative (since Google picked you as the best answer).
The different formatting of the answer box compared to the rest of the results is sure to bring more eyes to the result.

Slawski drew from another Google research paper to come up with some possible sources for authoritative answers:

Tabular data (example: a Wikipedia info box alongside a Wiki article)
Relational tables that display related data in tabular format (such as a list of U.S. Presidents and basic facts about each)
Colon-delimited pairs (such as “Check In Time: 3:00 PM; Check Out Time: 12 Noon” for a hotel)
Structured snippets
Knowledge bases
Query stream data merged with knowledge bases and web documents (Biperpedia)

Some facts are just in the Knowledge Graph and need no attribution (“How old is Barack Obama?”), while others come from specific sources.

In some cases, it appears Google may actually reach out directly to trusted sources to gain information. For example, Google recently announced a partnership with reliable health sources such as the Mayo Clinic to obtain answers from real human experts, which are now being passed along for selected health-related queries as direct answers.

Bill Slawski’s slide deck for this presentation:

The Growth of Direct Answers – How Should SEOs Evolve from Search Marketing Expo – SMX

Winning With Direct Answers As A Content Site By Ehren Reilly

Reilly began by allaying fears site owners might have about publishing question-answer type content, namely that such content is “thin” and therefore could bring on a Panda penalty. But Reilly claimed that Panda is not really about thin content, at last not in the sense of the length of the content. Panda, he said, is more about quality. So content can be high quality but bite-sized.

However, many sites have tried to drive traffic by merely providing quick question-and-answer type information. That alone won’t work so well anymore. Google realized people want such info as quickly as possible, so why make them click through to a site for it?

So as more and more of those questions get answered by Google direct answer boxes, it is no longer a viable business model just to supply high quality but bite-sized information. Sites like isitraining.org or whatsmyipaddress.org are becoming superfluous.

Another endangered species, according to Reilly, is what he called “high quality, non-proprietary content.” This is content that is highly valued by searchers, but is either public domain information or easily-obtained licensed information. He gave examples of song lyrics, information available in Wikipedia or other public knowledge bases, or simple facts already in Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Sometimes Google even provides answers directly in the query box auto suggestions!

But what if you have high quality, proprietary content? Is that safe from Google’s direct answers?

Even that type of content can be threatened by direct answers. Google may show what Reilly called “spoiler alert” results.

In the example above, Google grabs one fact snippet out of a much longer piece (a complete recipe) to answer a question.

The above examples make many publishers feel like Google is stealing their content. But according to Reilly, Google’s response would be that they are just doing what’s best for the user.

So what can publishers do?

Reilly said you should consider that getting your content in a direct answer box is good branding. The top organic result isn’t always the one shown in the direct answer box, so earning that place could be considered a win for a lower-ranking site.

Reilly provided an example of such a win achieved by his company, Glassdoor. They publish salary info for various jobs, which started showing up in direct answers. The problem was that while the information was theirs, from a report that took a large investment to produce, Google was showing in the answer box data and attributions from other publishers writing about their report.

They analyzed their page in comparison to those that were getting the answer box, and determined that the other publishers had a sentence that clearly and directly answered the questions, while theirs didn’t. They altered their page to include such sentences, and very quickly they began showing up in the answer boxes.

Takeaway: Make sure you have clear, natural language in your articles that directly answers the most likely questions about any factual information.

Reilly shared another benefit they discovered: when you get in an answer box, your regular result gets a fatter snippet with the same answer text. You get more search results real estate.

Every direct answer follows a formula. If you look carefully at the pages that get into direct answers for information your site provides, you’ll see the pattern. Find it for your pages and structure your content accordingly.

What about clicks? Webmasters are concerned about whether direct answer boxes result in click-throughs to their sites.

The classic search problem was getting more clicks than your competitors. But now it is more like getting a click vs. no click at all!

Some direct answers entice clicks better than others. For example, a list or step-by-step answer box which has abbreviated steps with an ellipsis link at the end, or an incomplete set of instructions with a “more info” link.

How do you earn those? Create large or exhaustive lists that Google can’t fit completely in an answer box.

Another trick Reilly shared is to provide teaser text right after your direct answer that hints there is more the reader would want to know. Chances are that text will get included in the direct answer, thereby enticing a click through.

What about rank tracking? Be aware that if there are direct answers, your ranking results may be thrown off. Some rank tracking software doesn’t handle direct answers well, counting them as one of the organic results, or even as the top several.

Reilly cautioned that we should expect flux. Direct answers are still new. Google is constantly testing new formats, and there are errors to be fixed.

If you’re a publisher, get over your frustration and see this as a new opportunity.

Ehren Reilly’s slide deck from his presentation:

How to Win With Direct Answers as a Content Site from Search Marketing Expo – SMX

Some Tidbits From The Q&A

For Glassdoor, being in direct answers proved to be more beneficial than being #1 in regular result under a direct answer that used someone else’s site.
Enge noted that Google seems to respond more often with a direct answer when you make a voice query as opposed to a typed query on mobile.
Reilly said that direct answers give new life to FAQs. You can now rank for an individual answer on an FAQ page.
Danny Sullivan noted that even searching “Zillow mortgage calculator” now returns the Google mortgage calculator. So even branding your generic info is not an advantage. However, he said that we should remember that after Yelp complained loudly when Google showed Google reviews even when queries specified Yelp reviews, the Google reviews for such queries disappeared after the Pigeon update. So it may be possible for powerful brands to reclaim their branded info-content.

AMA: Common Local SEO Mistakes Made By Businesses Big & Small

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 07:26:00 -0700

Have questions about local SEO? Columnist Andrew Shotland has anticipated these questions and is answering them, Reddit-style!

Hi, everybody. I am Andrew Shotland, founder of Local SEO Guide. Seems like every day, we run into multi-location and small businesses having problems with their local and organic Google rankings. My guess is you are reading this because you’ve got some problems of your own. So go ahead. Ask me anything!

Note to the uninitiated: This post is done in the style of a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), in which users ask questions to people who are knowledgeable about a topic. Here, our esteemed columnist is identified as “localseoguide,” who is answering questions from hypothetical inquirers.

[-] multilocomonsterbrand
We grow by acquiring competitor locations. Seems like every time we do this, we kill the new location’s local rankings. Doesn’t exactly make for a fun honeymoon.

[-] localseoguide
Hey Multiloco, rebranding a location is one of the quicker ways to tank your local rankings.

You are likely changing the name of the business and the phone number which can cause a mismatch in your NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) across various services on the Web that Google looks at to help it figure out if it should rank the business for various queries.

Inconsistent NAP issues can lead to local ranking problems. While there’s no easy way around this, we typically use the following approach when rebranding a location:

Domain Name Changes. Avoid changing your domain name (see here, here andhere for why this process sucks and advice on how to do it). Do not mark your old brand’s GMB page as “permanently closed”. This can cause all sorts of problems if you can’t get Google Local Support to merge it with your new brand’s GMB page.
Up-To-Date Business Data. Update your business data everywhere, particularly at the main citation sources and data aggregators. Terminate with extreme prejudice any old NAP listings you can find, including any old inconsistent NAP Info for the acquired location (e.g., the name it had two names ago, the phone number it had five phone numbers ago, etc.)
3. Rebranded Website. Update your business name, etc. on your website. Can’t tell you how many times I have seen this one.
Google My Business. Once you have fixed the citations and data aggregators, then go to your Google My Business page and update the NAP. We have seen the process of updating everything else before the GMB page can help speed the rankings recovery.
Rebranding. Make sure on all your citations and website you include some “formerly known as {OLD BRAND}” language as people may still be searching for the old brand on Yelp or Google and you want to make sure that your new brand shows up for these queries.
Changing Business Name. Check out The SMB Guide To Changing Business Names & SEO for more detail.

[-] thanksfortherankingsobama!
I tried everything you recommended above and our local rankings still blow.

[-] localseoguide
While there can be many reasons for a business not ranking, one of the primary issues we see a lot of agencies and DIYers miss is that they didn’t do a thorough enough job of cleansing the NAP data. Are you sure you found everything, or at least every major thing?

For example, did you check Google Mapmaker to make sure there weren’t any problems? Did you squash all the dupes at the main aggregators? Did you update the Facebook page?

We often see these things overlooked. There are a lot of tools that can help you figure this stuff out. We developed NAP Hunter, a free Chrome extension to make it easier to suss this junk out.

You also may want to check out the Local Data Ecosystem tab on our free Local SEO Audit doc. And I really like Joy Hawkins’ & Phil Rozek’s Google MapMaker Troubleshooting guides.

[-] imalawyerandusedtogettingmywaybutwtf
We have several attorneys in our practice and I hear that Google allows you to have listings for each attorney. Should I do this?

[-] localseoguide
Google calls these “practitioners” and there’s a good chance that if your staff are already listed in various industry databases that Google has already created GMB pages for them. This can be a tricky issue because sometimes these practitioner pages will rank well for good queries and sometimes they won’t.

But in general, our experience is that practitioner listings can act like dupes and we often see clients perform well if we “de-dupe” which basically means try to either merge them with the business’ main GMB page or remove the business’ branding from the listing and give them a unique phone number.

But before you start fixing the problem, make sure that none of these are ranking for anything as sometimes fixing this problem can do more damage than good. I really like Linda Buquet’s take on this issue in her Dr. Dupes & Google+ Local User Edits post.

[-] napattack
I am getting hit up by listings management vendors. Some have automated solutions while others do manual claiming of citations. Which works best?

[-] localseoguide
This is one of the multi-million dollar questions in local SEO these days. Our typical answer is there is no perfect solution and it often comes down to budget, time, labor and other stuff particular to your business’ situation.

Automated solutions like Yext* are pretty great for what they do, which is to quickly get control of your listings on approximately 50 local directory sites and allow you to update them — many in real time.

These solutions also have a duplicate suppression service that we like. So if you want the work done fast with minimal effort, and you want to be able to update your listings whenever you want, automated is a good solution.

But Yext doesn’t hit all of the data aggregators and it doesn’t hit some directories that may be important to you. In those cases, you need a manual solution.

Moz Local has an interesting service that hits the four big local data aggregators. There are some vendors that have automated these tasks to some degree with bots that can login for you; but sooner or later, a person needs to touch these and often these are low-wage, high-volume operations prone to error. But if you have a lot of locations and/or are unfamiliar with this stuff, there may be no alternative.

One common question about Yext is what happens when you stop paying them. In those cases, your listings get “unlocked” and sites may overwrite your data and screw it up. Of course the same thing happens with manual listings management. We have seen plenty of claimed and deduped citations get overwritten, screwed up, etc. This is one of the many reasons local SEO at scale can be aggravating.

[-] servicearea51
I do all my work out of a truck. How do I get ranked locally in cities where I don’t have a physical location?

[-] localseoguide
This is a tricky one. Google has been trying to tighten the radius on local results for a while and not having a physical location in your target city can make it hard to crack the local packs, particularly for high-density, competitive categories (e.g. restaurants, dentists, lawyers. etc.).

While many companies use virtual offices, P.O. Boxes, fake addresses and the like to try to game these results, we try to avoid tactics like these that we think Google is trying to snuff out.

In many cases, the best offense is to go for organic rankings (the non-local pack parts of the SERPs). I recommend How To Rank Outside of Your Physical Location in Google Places for further reading.

[-] linklessinlouisville
How do I do linkbuilding that can help my local rankings without getting crapped on by the Penguin?

[-] localseoguide
Linkbuilding is a challenge for every business. But we continue to see, particularly post Pigeon, that backlinks can overcome a lot of local SEO problems. So here are some easy ways to get started:

Charity Sponsorships. List all of the charities you sponsor. If you don’t sponsor any, grow a heart and find some in your community and/or in your niche. Find out how you can get involved with them in a way that can generate a link.

Often this means helping out an event, becoming a sponsor, writing content for their site, etc. We find these types of opportunities provide some of the best links and feel good at the same time.
Know Your Niche. Research all relevant media for your geo/niche and figure out which ones accept content. For example, our local newspaper site allows you to become a local blogger. Of course be careful with how you link back to your site, but that’s for another post.
Seek Link Opportunities. Put a list together of all local groups and businesses that you are involved with. Is your kid in a local theater company? Are you a member of the local mother’s club? Part of a regular MeetUp group? All are good link opportunities.
Local Citations. Make sure that you have all your local citations covered. These are often the easiest links to get and many get overlooked.
Grab Attention. Do something crazy. Like make a crazy car dealer website. Ask for one star reviews. Or just be born with a really bad name. It’s the Attention Economy. Get some.

Ok. Enough with the questions. Back to work…

*Full disclosure: Andrew does some consulting for Yext on occasion and is totally in their pocket. Can you say “conflict of interest”? Don’t trust a word he says.

Local Businesses: How To Get Good Online Reviews That Build Business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 07:11:00 -0700

Online reviews can make or break local businesses these days, so columnist George Aspland shares his process for cultivating (good) reviews.

Good reviews on sites like Google and Yelp can entice people to check your business out, improve conversions, and potentially help organic search engine rankings. In this article, I’ll show you how to generate a continuous flow of good online reviews that should help your local business.

Why You Want Good Reviews

Reviews Stand Out in the Search Results. Good reviews on search engines like Google and review sites like Yelp can help attract more people to check out your business, as they often feature prominently in search results.

Local reviews are not just helpful for restaurants and hotels, but for most local businesses.

We focus on a number of markets including the legal market. I was showing a prospective customer its local results in Woburn, MA for one of the areas of law it focuses on.

A competitor’s listing appeared at the top of the local results with a 4.5 star rating (see the screen shot above). The star rating makes that listing stand out, and the reviews likely play a factor in it being the top listing in the local results. (I’ll talk about reviews’ effect on rankings below.)

Reviews Can Help Improve Conversions (Leads, Sales, Signups, etc.). Having a number of good reviews can make people feel more comfortable about doing business with you. In surveys such as this one on Marketing Land, 90% of the respondents said that positive online reviews influence their buying decisions. Perhaps even more importantly, almost as large a percentage were influenced by negative reviews.

People May Choose To View Only Highly Rated Or Reviewed Sites. Some sites, like Yelp and Google, allow people to only see listings with a minimum star rating, or to sort the listings by the most reviews.

If your business is in a market where a large percentage of your competitors have online reviews, your listing may not even be visible if you don’t have enough good reviews.

Do Reviews Affect Rankings?

While Google and Bing have never confirmed that reviews have an impact on rankings, anecdotal evidence suggests it’s likely.

In a 2013 analysis for the hotel industry, Digital Marketing Works found a strong correlation between reviews/ratings and positions, specifically between Local Carousel rank and average review rating and quantity. (Note: Google’s Carousel display is being retired.) We have seen have seen similar correlations in markets we focus on and others have reported correlations, as well.

In the 2014 MOZ Local Search Ranking Factors, a survey of industry marketers which focus on local search, respondents were asked to identify and assign a percentage of influence to ranking factors. Overall, the respondents believe that review signals — such as the quantity of reviews, review velocity, review diversity, etc., are a significant factor in rankings.

Is It Okay To Ask For Online Reviews?

Whether or not it’s acceptable to ask customers for reviews depends on the review site. You’ll need to check the terms and conditions for any review site you’ll focus on – some frown upon asking customers to submit reviews, while some encourage it.

For example, Yelp discourages businesses from soliciting customer reviews. It believes that solicited reviews jeopardize the site’s integrity, as users would eventually see the reviews as biased toward favorable ones, and therefore, untrustworthy.

Google, on the other hand, suggests that you encourage reviews for your business:

Remind your customers to leave feedback on Google. Simply reminding customers that it’s quick and easy to leave feedback on Google on mobile or desktop can help your business stand out from sites with fewer reviews.

It’s important to research the terms and conditions for any review site you plan to focus on so you’ll know what is allowed. If you can’t find this information easily on their site, try searching for “[review site] terms and conditions” in a search engine.

Now, I’ll show you the process we recommend to our clients to develop a continuous stream of online reviews.

Make Sure Your Customers Are Happy!

First and foremost is to ensure that your customers are happy. You need happy customers to get good reviews! Unfortunately, unhappy customers are the ones most likely to post reviews.

You should work to identify both your satisfied and unsatisfied clients. Depending on the nature of your business, you could send out a satisfaction survey or call your customers periodically.

What we do is to ask our clients, “Would you take a call from a prospective client?” If they say yes, we know they are reasonably happy. If we don’t get an answer, we may have a problem.

If you find unhappy clients, you should take steps to learn what you need to do to correct the situation.

Find The Best Review Sites For You And Your Industry

There are many review sites. You want to focus on the most important review sites for your business and your industry. Here’s what we do for our clients:

Search On Your Brand Names. Search on your company and brand names, with and without adding “reviews” to the search. You should find most of the public reviews you already have. Check those reviews. If you have some bad reviews, you’ll want to consider if and how you should respond.

If you have a large number or bad reviews versus good reviews on a review site, you should consider focusing on this review site in order to build up more good reviews.
Search On Important Non-Brand Keywords. Let’s say you own a gym. You’ll want to do some non-branded searches relevant to your business, such as “gym new haven” and other important search queries. Scan the results for reviews, and make note of the searches you’ve done and the review sites you see on the first page or so of the search results.
Search On Brand Names Of Your Industry Leaders & Some Key Competitors.As with the non-brand keywords, scan the results for reviews and make note of the searches and the review sites you see in the top results.

After you have compiled the results of the above searches, make a short list of review sites to focus on by choosing the review sites that appear in the top search results for multiple searches along with the sites where you found you already have reviews. (Even if there are mostly good reviews, you may want to focus on these sites to keep a stream of good reviews as many people do look at the dates to see how recent the reviews are.)

Before you begin driving customers to any review sites, create or update profiles on any of the sites that allow it. You want clients and other users of the review site to see updated information. Plus you’ll have a way to respond to reviews.

Entice Customers To Submit A Review Online

Here are some tips to entice your customers to submit an online review. Again, check the terms and conditions of the review sites you plan to focus on so you know what you are allowed to do.

Create A Web Page With Links To Review Sites. You can create a web page that includes links to your profiles on some review sites, then encourage people to visit this page – for example, by putting a “Check us out on these review sites” link on most or all of your web pages and your email signatures.

Put Links To Review Sites In Your Web Pages & Email Signatures. Rather than creating a separate web page, you could put links to one or a couple of review sites on all or most of your pages. For example, you can add these links in the right or left column of the site with a headline such as “Check us out on these review sites.” Add similar links to your email signatures.

Create Business Cards With Review Site Information. Some businesses hand out a business card that includes the URL for an important review site.

I went to a surf school in Barbados a few years ago. When I was leaving (and they knew I was happy), they handed me their business card. On it was the URL to their TripAdvisor profile. Because of the number of great reviews they have (including one from me), this surf school was listed as one of the top activities in Barbados on TripAdvisor.

Hand Out A Flyer. Some businesses hand out a sheet with simple directions to get people started at a review site. However, the review process can change, so you’ll need to keep it up to date.

Just Ask. You could ask clients to submit a review on the phone or by email.

Add A Request To An Email About Another Topic. You could add a message to an email you send out to clients about some other topic.

For example, my family and I took a cooking class in Tuscany while we were there. A couple weeks later, we each received email messages with some free recipes. At the end of the message the site added, “Last pleasure to ask… can you write a review on TripAdvisor about our Tuscan cooking class?” Because of all the good reviews it had, that cooking class was ranked as one of the top things to do in that city on TripAdvisor.

About Google Reviews

If you have a local business focus you’ll certainly want some good reviews on Google Maps (Google+ Local).

However, Google requires a Google Account in order to post a review. Not everyone will have a Google Account, and those who don’t may not want to spend the time to set one up just to submit a review. So, have an alternative review site for them that is easier to post reviews on.

Also, look for customers who have a Google email account (such as name@gmail.com) since you’ll know they have a Google Account.

Get Reviews Over Time, On A Continuous Basis

It’s best to get reviews in a natural progression over time, so don’t ask all your clients to submit reviews at the same time. Make getting online reviews a part of your ongoing business processes.

You May Get Some Bad Reviews…

…and that’s okay. In fact, too many good reviews and no bad ones is unnatural and looks suspicious.

If you do get some bad reviews, you’ll need to decide if and how you should respond. Here are some articles about responding to bad reviews.

5 Tips For Responding To Negative Customer Reviews Online
Handling Haters: How To Respond To Negative Online Reviews
4 Cool-Headed Strategies for Responding to Negative Comments Online

Got any other tips for cultivating reviews? Share in the comments!

Google To Launch New Doorway Page Penalty Algorithm

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 07:02:00 -0700

Google will take algorithmic action on more doorway pages in the near future. The new algorithm adjustment will impact these pages trying to increase their search footprint.

Google announced they are releasing a new “ranking adjustment” to their doorway page classifier to better handle doorway pages in the search results.

In short, Google does not want to rank doorway pages in their search results. The purpose behind many of these doorway pages is to maximize their search footprint by creating pages both externally on the web or internally on their existing web site, with the goal of ranking multiple pages in the search results, all leading to the same destination.

Google’s Brian White said:

Over time, we’ve seen sites try to maximize their “search footprint” without adding clear, unique value. These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof. To improve the quality of search results for our users, we’ll soon launch a ranking adjustment to better address these types of pages. Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change.

Google will be launching over this new ranking adjustment shortly and those who have created doorway pages may see them really soon.

How do you know if your web pages are classified as a “doorway page?” Google said asked yourself these questions:

Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

Yahoo Asking Firefox Users To Make Yahoo Search Their Default Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 06:55:00 -0700

After Yahoo lost some Firefox users to Google, Yahoo begins notifying these users to switch back to Yahoo Search as their default search provider in Firefox.

Yahoo is now asking Firefox users to switch their default search engine to Yahoo Search. Yahoo is touting the message that Firefox switched from Google to Yahoo has their default search partner in November so all Firefox users should also consider making the switch as well.

Here is a picture of the Yahoo home page adding a bar at the top of the page that reads:

Yahoo is the preferred search engine for Firefox. Switch now.

It also seen on Yahoo’s other properties including Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail and many others:

Earlier this month, Google began begging Firefox users to switch back from Yahoo Search to Google search as their default search provider in Firefox.

Last week we reported that Yahoo lost search market share as some Firefox users began to switch their default search provider from Yahoo back to Google. This is Yahoo’s effort to bring back those switchers to Yahoo Search again.